Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
After ten years, eight movies and an eye-popping $7.7 billion in worldwide box office grosses, the Harry Potter franchise cast its final spell in July with the release of the second half of its two-part finale. If the first installment was mostly protracted set-up, Deathly Hallows Part 2 is all climax, rushing headlong into the final battle between Hogwarts' most put-upon boy wizard and the evil, nose-less mass murderer that returned from the grave just so he could finish off what he started 17 years ago. More of a war movie than a family-friendly fantasy epic -- complete with heavy casualties on both sides -- the film has a few clunky scenes (most notably an unnecessary epilogue marred by some truly laughable age makeup) but overall offers a mostly satisfying conclusion to a beloved franchise.
Extras: Matthew Lewis, who plays fan favorite Neville Longbottom, hosts the 80-minute Maximum Movie Mode option available only on the Blu-ray edition. Other bonus features include a conversation between Potter creator J.K. Rowling and The Boy (Now Man) Who Has Harry, Daniel Radcliffe; a featurette devoted to the franchise's female characters and deleted scenes. [Note: The DVD streets on Friday November 11 -- Ethan.]

The Change-Up
Of all the studio-produced R-rated comedies that arrived in theaters this past summer, The Change-Up was the only one that failed to register with critics and audiences. There's a reason for that: it's not very good, despite a cast that includes such skilled comic actors as Jason Bateman (star of Horrible Bosses, which was one of the summer's R-rated hits), Ryan Reynolds and Leslie Mann, who does a terrific job in the movie's most interesting (and most thankless) role as Bateman's neglected wife. Basically an update on those body-switching movies that Hollywood used to churn out weekly back in the '80s, The Change-Up finds a family man (Bateman) and swinging single guy (Reynolds) swapping skins after they pee in a magical fountain. We wish we were kidding about that last part.
Extras: A gag reel and deleted scenes; two featurettes and a commentary track from director David Dobkin, who previously helmed the much funnier summer hit, Wedding Crashers.

Blue Velvet
Easily one of the most influential movies of the past thirty years, David Lynch's Blue Velvet was the first film to expose the dark and seamy underbelly of the seemingly perfect suburban community. Donnie Darko, Desperate Housewives and American Beauty are just some of the subsequent titles that owe their existence in large part to this 1986 mindbender. The plot, of course, involves a young suburbanite (Lynch regular Kyle MacLachlan) who inadvertently acquaints himself with a nightclub singer (Isabella Rossellini) and her crazy kinda, sorta boyfriend (Dennis Hopper) who has some major sexual hang-ups. While Blue Velvet was neither the first nor the last Lynch feature to get viewers hot and bothered, it remains one of his defining -- and very best -- works of art.
Extras: Outtakes and almost an hour's worth of never-before-seen footage.

The Collector
Based on John Fowles' chilling 1963 novel The Collector, this flawed, but still worthy film adaptation casts a young Terence Stamp as a shy, awkward (and mentally unstable) butterfly collector that kidnaps the girl of his dreams and locks her up in his basement, hoping she'll learn to love him. On the page, Fowles memorably split the narrative's point-of-view between the captor and his prisoner. The movie version doesn't pull this off quite as effectively, but it still manages to captures the horror -- as well as the dark comedy -- of the situation. We wouldn't say no to a contemporary remake though, particularly one directed by David Fincher, whose own sensibilities would be a natural fit for this material.

Also on DVD:
Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald called upon the might of YouTube to help them craft Life in a Day, a documentary depicting an ordinary 24-hour period on this planet we all call home. They received some 80,000 videos from the site's users and edited that 4,500 hours of footage in a 90-minute collage of images and scenes from 190 countries around the world. Much like YouTube itself, the finished product is a mish-mash of the beautiful, the banal and the downright annoying. After years of false starts, someone was finally able to make a movie out of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel/political tract, Atlas Shrugged. Depending on how you choose to believe, Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 was either a triumph that will absolutely be followed by another film or a bloated vanity project that has much chance of receiving a sequel as Green Lantern. Turning to classic releases, One-Eyed Jacks stars Marlon Brando (who also directed for the first and only time) as an escaped criminal who hunts down the man that betrayed him, while Little Big Man features Dustin Hoffman as a man raised by Native Americans who winds up fighting alongside General Custer at Little Big Horn. The 1981 hit The Cannonball Run features an all-star cast (led by Burt Reynolds) competing against each other in a wild and wacky cross-country auto race. One of Terry Gilliam's finest (and most underrated) films, The Fisher King features wonderful work by Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges and a beautifully executed storybook depiction of Manhattan. And while it may not fit some people's definition of a classic, the made-for-HBO movie Gia proved to be a star-making vehicle for one Angelina Jolie, who memorably bared all (literally) in this story of the rise and fall of a '70s fashion model.

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